For more than two years, the people of the village of Dibekli in the district of Diyadin in eastern Turkey have been fighting against the construction of a marble quarry, which finally began a few days ago. To this end, officials were sent to the village some time ago to tell the residents that their homes would fall victim to the new construction work and that they should please leave them.
To back up these claims, Alper Balci, prefect of Diyadin, visited the village when the work began, had more than 100 soldiers surrounding the residents' homes, and threatened the residents if they continued their resistance: "If you don't leave your homes, I will speak to you in another language." He said there was no proof of a farmers' entitlement to the land, which the company had acquired by signing the contracts.
Villagers continue to protest against the operation, denouncing the cowardly performance of the local government: "The prefect is threatening us and our children; my land is here, my village is here. They should take their hands off us and not destroy our house."
Resistance to quarrying has been growing for several months now in various parts of rural Turkey. The situation is becoming more complicated for the imperialists because they are running out of extraction sites in the oppressed nations in the long run as peoples resist quarry operations; and as more and more military is sent in to stop resistance, peasants are forced to practice and be forged in struggle. The more peasants lose their land to displacement, the more urgent the solution to the land issue and the stronger the drive for the agrarian revolution.
